Massachusetts pushes for Open Formats

In an article
from Groklaw, the author points to a recent apparent
agreement between the State of Massachusetts and
Microsoft about the use of Microsoft Office file
formats and compliance with recent requirements from the state about open file
format use.

It appears that the state is pushing the company to relax their rather
restrictive Office 2003 XML Format Patent
License, such
that the formats would be more universally read and written.

For those unfamiliar with Microsoft's recent foray into so-called
"intellectual property," the company is doing its best to claim ownership of
basically everything that has ever been created by, for, or on a computer and
they are using their dominant position in the marketplace to force all of
their "partners" to sign up for license agreements that bolster these claims.

The effort by the state to limit the use of file formats that require
proprietary software is something to be applauded loudly. If more people and
organizations had these kinds of requirements, there'd be far fewer people
locked up in proprietary formats and applications (something Microsoft would
loathe).

As of this writing, the
specifications from
the ITD (Information Technology Division give the
following as acceptable formats:

XML v1.0 (or 1.1 when necessary) - W3 Consortium
Frankly, this list is relatively close to a list that I tend to keep for my
own personal documents. For archival purposes, though, I also use a variety of
open formats for pictures, sound, and video.

Even the rationale of the folks in Massachusetts' IT Division makes a lot of
sense. They don't want to be locked into software, don't want to abandon their
customers by leaving them out in the cold (all of these formats are readable
on a Macintosh, Windows Box, and variety of other computers), and they don't
want to get stuck 30 years from now with data in a format that they can't
read.